AXIOM Corporation
The AXIOM Corporation (styled as AXIOM) is a multinational conglomerate and megacorporation that specializes in the space and energy industry. AXIOM, founded in the year 2044, has frontiered multiple developments into the technology used on modern starships, and have even built multiple ships of their own through its shipyards on Earth and Mars. The company exhibits large amounts of power over the space market and controls valuable assets on various celestial bodies. Several world governments utilize AXIOM technologies in the starships of their own, the most notable two being the HSC-133 Escapade and the HCR-146 Emissary. However, the most powerful industry that AXIOM is in is the energy industry, where it single-handedly managed to successfully develop sustainable fusion energy, solving the energy crisis once and for all and giving massive amounts of energy to consumers using its fusion reactors. AXIOM is often credited for ending the usage of fossil fuels to power earlier power plants. Smaller versions of said reactors can be found on starships, piloting their warp drives. AXIOM, due to its large influence, is largely democratic and run by a very large board of directors, but still ultimately spearheaded by a Chief Executive Officer. It also possesses a large, well-equipped security detail for guarding of its assets. AXIOM is close allies with the United Nations and often strikes partnerships and other deals with the organization. Departments AXIOM runs several departments that specialize in various other fields than power and space. * Administration Department: Oversees administration and control over the company. Consists of a democratic board of directors and headed by the Chief Executive Officer (CEO). * Engineering Department: In charge of building, maintaining, and designing new corporate products and commissions. * Foreign Affairs Department: In charge of maintaining sovereign relations with governmental bodies, including the United Nations. * Research and Development Department: Controls research and development of all AXIOM technologies and forwards them to engineering for fabrication. Led by a board of Science Officers. * Aerospace Department: In charge of managing and developing aerospace technologies, including air and space vehicles and ships. * Corporate Affairs Department: Handles any and all AXIOM corporate affairs, including legal disputes and dealings with other companies. * Security Department: In charge of assets protection and offensive detail in order to protect AXIOM assets and forward AXIOM’s interests through force, if diplomacy fails. * Admiralty Department: Responsible for command and control of AXIOM’s space navy service, particularly ships directly controlled by AXIOM. * Medical Department: In charge of the development of medical technology and distribution to AXIOM and its partners. * The Academy: Training and education department; spearheads exercises and courses to further the skills of employees and executives of the company. * ANNEX: Fully independent intelligence division of AXIOM specializing in espionage and counterintelligence. Details of its operations are strictly classified. Fusion Reactors Main article: Guide to the Reactor Fusion reactors are the backbone of AXIOM’s placement in the galactic market, and are extremely efficient and produce next to no pollution. Utilizing a revolutionary energy recycling method, AXIOM reactors can efficiently produce more energy than they consume to maintain. The process to start a fusion reactor starts by drawing the coolant into the chamber to cool the electromagnets and components to fuel the reactor. Next, a stream of high-temperature hydrogen is injected into the chamber, where it is superheated into a plasma by the auxiliary power unit and begins charging the energy receptors. After a period of time, large amounts of heat and electrical energy are harvested from the reactor. An array of thermoelectric generators found closer to the main ship convert the heat energy generated by the reactor into electricity. The current is then fed into power cells to be kept for storage. Various transformers and inverters help convert the energy into useable form by ship electronics. At the same time, a small portion of the plasma in the reactor is vented through a rear tube, ionized, and mixed with large quantities of xenon gas to power the plasma thrusters that drive the ships using AXIOM technology. Fusion reactors are widely credited for their relatively safe use and no harmful emissions. Upon a breach, the plasma is vented into the central chamber where it quickly disperses and becomes harmless. Furthermore, the advanced coolant utilized, combined with cutting-edge heat resistant materials and alloys, ensures the plasma can go to higher temperatures than normal without compromising the reactor’s integrity. Numerous breakthroughs in reactor design and thermodynamics research have allowed for the construction of far more efficient and practical fusion reactors than their 21st-century prototypes. An AXIOM reactor has the disadvantage of having a relatively short lifespan compared to other reactor types and requires frequent maintenance. AXIOM has therefore built up a large engineering department to ensure their reactors stay in top shape. History The year is 2044. The world is in disarray after the combined events of a miniature nuclear war and the exhaustion of the world’s remaining oil and coal deposits. Nuclear power was the world’s dominating source of energy but was quickly rendered inefficient when all remaining reserves of radioactive material were formed into bombs and stockpiled by governments across the world. Resistance to change has left renewable energy anything but viable; its sectors desperately attempting to convert the world to solar and wind but failing. It generates very little of the planet’s energy source. Amidst this crisis, the governments of the world sought out to anyone who could invent a new power source to solve the energy crisis. Among those who took up the challenge was an English particle physicist and entrepreneur named Anthony Goodwood. Goodwood owned a small particle research startup back then—named Axiom Dynamics, situated in the United Kingdom—and the firm’s work had little more to do than attempt to research new forms of matter using particle accelerators. However, upon Goodwood’s acceptance of a deal to find a new energy source, he ordered his firm to heavily invest in a new technology of power. The premise of fusion reactors was abandoned in 2028 after countless attempts to simulate fusion energy through prototype reactors failed to generate enough of an energy surplus to be considered self-sufficient, and all further research on it was halted by the governments as a ‘waste of time’. Rivaling the concept of fusion energy was antimatter power—a theoretical source of energy that used the annihilation of a particle-antiparticle pair to generate enormous quantities of energy. However, as antimatter was outrageously expensive to produce and dangerous to maintain, research on it has been halted as well. That left Goodwood and his firm with only fusion as a researchable solution, and they went to work. Three years passed by without much progress until a team of chemists and metallurgists in the firm had discovered a special magnetic alloy, which, when fed electric current, would be three times more powerful than any preexisting electromagnet while consuming half the energy. This alloy was named ‘neaxium’—and it remains a closely-guarded corporate secret to the present day. Goodwood spent most of his grant money on fabricating neaxium. Using neaxium in the electromagnets for a Tokamak reactor design would have enormous benefits, as the electromagnets used to heat up and spin the reactor plasma inside would consume less power and be more powerful in their work. Six months later a new Tokamak reactor was built, using the latest-generation alloys and neaxium electromagnets to power it. Hydrogen was then loaded into the reactor chamber and the process was started. Clearly audible were the high-pitched shrieks and hums as the reactor spun to life, its efficient magnetic fields generating higher and higher temperatures than before, allowing the plasma to grow even hotter. And then, the readings. Goodwood and his scientists looked up at the monitors to see that the reactor was generating more than double the energy used to power it, and maintained the energy for an entire day. Goodwood ordered the reactor to stay running for one month to see the results. When they returned after thirty days, the team saw the reactor still running, helium pouring out of the reactor chamber into collection tanks—a sign the reaction was still running. Goodwood called the experiment a success and ordered the reactor to be exhibited to the government of the European Union. Despite strong public skepticism of a working fusion reaction, Axiom Dynamics had successfully activated the reactor and showed the observers the readings, and they were astonished. After a thorough investigation to determine whether the readings were falsified, the government concluded that the reactor did, in fact, produce more energy than it took to power it. The government rewarded Goodwood and his firm a total of $2 billion for outputting a viable solution to the energy crisis and ordered the company to build more. Six months into the construction of another reactor, the lead scientist responsible for the development of neaxium left the company and demanded the rights to neaxium from Axiom Dynamics. Goodwood refused, and the scientist sued the company. After a fierce court battle lasting eight weeks, the judge ruled in Goodwood’s favor and forced the scientist to relinquish the rights of neaxium to the company. Goodwood became famous after the heavily televised court case and proceeded to fiercely patent his reactor design afterward. Nobody else could produce a fusion reactor like Axiom Dynamics—and the company monopolized the energy industry. The remnants of the oil companies were furious at this monopoly, as a single small research firm had outdone dozens of centennial corporate giants who spent entire generations providing power to the people. And they attempted to do something about it. During a public conference on March 8, 2050, Goodwood was on a podium giving a speech about energy when he was shot—twice—in the shoulder and in the chest, narrowly missing the heart. He was hospitalized in critical condition and, while he survived the procedures, he was left severely traumatized by his attempted assassination and shortly afterward announced he was resigning from the company. After handing in his resignation letter, he disappeared completely—none of his coworkers were able to track his location. He was declared missing, and no search parties have found him or his body to this day. Melissa MacDonald, Irish-American manager and good friend of Goodwood, took over his role as the CEO of Axiom Dynamics. To facilitate better and more stable conditions for the company, she ordered the move of Axiom Dynamics from London to Seattle, Washington, in the United States. After moving location, the company was rebranded simply as Axiom (stylized AXIOM), and a new, sleek corporate HQ was constructed in downtown Seattle. An AXIOM reactor was introduced to the Seattle grid shortly afterward, and the company proceeded to earn more and more profits from their active power plants. After a few years, however, the company began to decline in its growth, with profits coming to a slow halt and maintaining itself. As AXIOM fed on profits from its reactors alone, there would be enormous problems if the company wished to expand. Among the crisis came Charles Francisco, a Hispanic entrepreneur with bold ideas. Succeeding MacDonald as the CEO, he ordered that the company gradually purchase subsidiaries to form departments—subdivisions of the company that each function as their own quasi-dependent entity. His own agenda pushed AXIOM out of financial depression and culminated in heavier investments into other specializations, turning AXIOM from an energy company into a conglomerate. He ordered the purchase of a total of 54 different companies to help create the company's departments, opening AXIOM to specialize in other fields previously left alone, such as dedicated research and development. In 2077, AXIOM placed #1 on the Fortune 500 companies, clocking at a grand $67 billion in monthly revenue. With this newfound value, Francisco ordered the company to diversify into the emerging space industry. AXIOM quickly invested $670 billion into the development of an Alcubierre drive by partner company Alcubierre Incorporated, heavily assisted by scientists from AXIOM’s own R&D department. As the technology was being developed, more and more breakthroughs rose from AXIOM’s R&D and the new, constantly-upgraded line of reactors offered by AXIOM to its customers grew more and more advanced and efficient. Rival company Gansai Industries, founded in Sapporo, Japan in 2080, developed plans for a rival energy source that displaced AXIOM from its energy monopoly. The antimatter reactor, created by the advent of the enabling of antimatter mass production, went into service and was regarded as having a higher overall energy output than most of AXIOM’s existing reactors. However, these antimatter reactors were extremely volatile, prohibiting them from dethroning AXIOM as the #1 energy provider. However, Gansai still managed to gain a duopoly with AXIOM in energy production, and slowly took 14% of the market of total reactor designs used on both planets and starships. AXIOM and Gansai officially declared each other rivals in 2090, ten years before the dawn of the new century. Amidst this, Francisco retired from active duty and was succeeded by Max Richmond in 2093. Richmond’s agenda ordered the company to invest more heavily into the space industry, and in 2094, Stratford Shipyards was created to enable AXIOM to build its own starships. AXIOM was immediately contracted by the government to build several new starships for their “Final Frontier” project, spearheaded by efforts by the United State’s reborn NASA program and extraplanetary transport and science company SpaceX. Research of the Alcubierre drive neared completion, and AXIOM invested more and more into the project until they finally came out with results. Researchers pumped out a new set of FTL drives in 2099. AXIOM was ordered to fit a new ship with this drive to test this experimental technology. The HSC-133 Escapade, commissioned by the United Nations, was the latest offering by the technology of how far humanity had come. Sporting artificial gravity generators, a state-of-the-art bridge, the latest technologies, and more, the HSC-133 was chosen to be the first to be fitted with a Mark 2 Alcubierre warp drive, powered by a Rosen-type AXIOM reactor. On its maiden flight in January 2100, on the dawn of the 22nd century, the Escapade successfully breached the light barrier and became the first ever man-made craft to move faster than light. The information sent by the Escapade was invaluable to the scientists, and they worked on developing brand new models to sustain even higher speeds and for longer periods of time. Conflicts As of 2113, Increasingly tense relations between the Earth and Mars governments have put AXIOM in the middle of a governmental conflict between two worlds. Current CEO Max Richmond has placed increasing amounts of the company’s budget into space development and construction, riding off the still-increasing profits of its reactor development. This has been a subject of mild controversy among the people, who believe that AXIOM should not participate in yet another booming industry. Repeated amounts of protests scattered throughout Earth, and even more in the colonies, call AXIOM on being the textbook “evil megacorporation”, and demands for it to shut down have been followed by violent riots ending in multiple deaths and requiring the intervention of the military to assist AXIOM Security. Scandals Richmond has responded with unusual fervor to reports of any humanitarian crises or labor problems caused by AXIOM’s proceedings, attempting to fix or compensate as much as possible in order to retain AXIOM’s personnel and its public image. Despite the charitable efforts of the administration, lots of under-the-table dealings and offerings have been scattered throughout the company’s more remote branches, from sexual harassment in the workplace to embezzlement by the managers. They hire numerous black market consultants and pay billions in hush money to prevent a word of their dealings from reaching the Board, who are now taking a hardline approach to anyone accused of illegal activity. Several instances of illegal activity in 2110, however, slipped through the firewalls and was made known to administration by the use of whistleblowers. Richmond immediately ordered a company-wide investigation in March 2111 and ended two years later with the arrests of over 550 regional managers, 27 assassinations of high-profile exposed crime bosses through shadow clients, and the grantings of witness protection and/or asylum to over 43,000 employees, with over $2 trillion paid in damages and compensation. More than $5.3 trillion -- about 11% of AXIOM’s total valuation -- was found in circulation through the black market and is currently in the midst of an ongoing effort to seize and recover the funds. AXIOM stock dropped a massive 22% over the course of these discoveries. 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